Last summer my son had brought a pair of swimming goggles with him to day camp, and he put them in his cubby. On this day he noticed a little six-year old boy standing near his cubby. Later he noticed that his goggles were missing and he saw this boy wearing them. He reported this to his counselor, but when asked the boy claimed they were his. Since my son had not written his name on his goggles, he did not have any proof that they were his.

When I found out what had happened, I asked the camp director to contact this boy’s parents about this incident. The next day, she told me that this little boy’s mother said that the little boy claimed the goggles were his. I was rather surprised as I had thought that his parents would realize that the goggles didn’t belong to their son.

When I picked my son up from camp, I explained to him that I believed in divine justice—that “what goes around comes around”, and that we didn’t need to do anything more. I told him Doreen Virtue’s wonderful quote about forgiveness, which states: “Forgiveness does not mean, ‘What you did is okay to me.’ It simply means, ‘I am no longer willing to carry around pain in response to your actions.'” I told him that I thought it was important for him to forgive this little boy. Then we bought a bright new pair of goggles, and we carefully wrote his name on them.

The next day, my son went on the camp’s all-day waterpark trip. When I went to pick him up at the end of the day, he said, “You won’t believe what happened today.” He then explained to me how the boy, who took his goggles, put them on and they immediately broke in half. He had also lost his camp shirt; he had not put his name on it and everyone denied taking it from him. He then had to spend the entire day at the water park without goggles or a shirt.

I was so surprised at what my son told me. My son even said that maybe it was a good thing that this boy had taken his goggles as otherwise they probably would have broken when he himself put them on and he would have been the one spending the day at a waterpark without them.

We all get to choose what kind of people we wish to be in the world. I hope that you will choose to be a kind, honest and forgiving person, who treats others in the way you wish to be treated. For that is how the universe will treat you.